


deixe-me ir

by thermodynamicActivity (chlorinetrifluoride)



Series: ipsa scientia potestas est [4]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternia is Terrible, Anti-Villain, Are they actually hallucinations? Nobody knows., Canon-Typical Violence, Depression, F/M, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hallucinations, M/M, Mental Instability, Mild Gore, Quadrant Confusion, Substance Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-02
Updated: 2018-07-02
Packaged: 2019-06-01 12:35:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15143210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chlorinetrifluoride/pseuds/thermodynamicActivity
Summary: Your name is Kurloz Makara, but most everyone refers to you by your title, the Grand Highblood. One of the last trolls who used your hatchling name on a regular basis has died, and you are not sure of how to proceed. You want Mindfang's head mounted on a pike, but not as much as you just want to lie down, close your eyes, and not awaken until your moirail does. Your moirail, with the broken neck, having been hung from a noose meant for another, and you unable to tell her all those things you should have said before she died.Still, your advisors beg you to keep going. And you do try. For the family. In retrospect, you do not try nearly hard enough.Scenes from your emotional unraveling, and from the relatively brief time you had with Redglare as your moirail.





	deixe-me ir

**Author's Note:**

> while i was revising the remainder of "if i had a heart, i could love you", i ended up writing some of GHB's reaction to redglare's death, and wrote so much about/for the scene that i ended up turning it into a standalone fic. a pretty long one.  
> mind all the warnings, please. this shit is pretty fucking dark. if you think T is too low a rating, feel free to let me know and i'll raise it to M.
> 
> if you haven't read the first and third fics in the "ipsa scientia potestas est" series, you might want to read them in order to better understand this story.
> 
> additionally, i headcanon that each level on the hemospectrum has its own languages/dialects, although speaking languages other than common alternian was gradually discouraged by the penultimate empress, and all but banned by the last one: the condesce. naturally, redglare, being who she is, knows a tealblood dialect or three. 
> 
> a translation of both the title and the song latula sings can be found in the end-notes.

_I wear this crown of thorns, upon my liar's chair,_  
_full of broken thoughts I cannot repair_  
_beneath the stains of time, the feelings disappear._  
_You are someone else; I am still right here._

_What have I become, my sweetest friend?  
Everyone I know goes away in the end.  
And you could have it all, my empire of dirt.  
I will let you down, I will make you hurt. _

\- Johnny Cash, [Hurt](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FywSzjRq0e4)

* * *

   
Your name is Kurloz Makara, known to most as the Grand Highblood, and there’s a corpse on the floor of your respiteblock. This is nothing new. You need the blood from your kills to mix paint. Usually you select prisoners from the catacombs to grace your walls, but… you aren’t creating any pigments today.  
  
Besides, there’d usually be more than one dead body if you were. What’s the point of only painting in one color?  
  
And this body here? It belonged to a tealblood. If you think of it as just a random dead tealblood, the pain you feel no longer threatens to eat you alive.  
  
Here lies your moirail of fifty-something sweeps. Her red eyes are half-open. Her white, red, and black cane lies next to her right hand.  
  
In the shitty redrom novels she used to read when she was bored out of her pan and had run out of crime noir, ancient and technically banned Alternian philosophers, and legal texts, oftentimes, the dead looked as if they could have been sleeping. Clean. Intact. At least if they had not been expressly drawn and quartered, or disemboweled over the course of the story.  
  
You’ve seen enough dead trolls in your life to know that a neat death is total hoofbeastshit. You’ve witnessed trolls with burns so deep that they exposed the bone, decapitated trolls with their heads mounted on spears, still trailing viscera, ropes of intestines leaking out of abdominal cavities, overtaxed psions with gold blood pouring from their mouth and ears.  
  
And most of this was your fault, or at least issued from orders you gave. You don’t regret it at all. Those trolls had it coming. Some of them even became paint for your walls.  
  
You gaze at the body in your quarters again.  
  
If not for the odd bent of Latula’s broken neck, and the thin angry grayish-teal marks encircling it, maybe she could be asleep.  
  
But she isn’t. Latula Pyrope, Neophyte Redglare, will never sleep again. Or perhaps she will sleep eternal. To be honest, you’re not sure. You’ve never died before. Having shrugged off a ludicrous number of “lethal” injuries, you’re not sure if you can.  
  
You pick the body up off the floor, and touch your forehead to hers. It’s cool, too cool for a troll of her hemocaste. Beneath the coolness comes a sour hint, a portent of the decomposition that will render her utterly unrecognizable in less than a perigee.  
  
“Am so motherfuckin’ sorry, Redglare,” you tell her.

It?

Her?  
  
Whatever your moirail was resides in this sack of organs no more, at least you try to convince yourself of that. But despite that inner monologue, you keep seeing Latula Pyrope in there somewhere, thinking, that maybe if you yell for a while, you’ll wake her up. And she’ll yell at you for interrupting all the sleep she never got in life.  
  
For her part, once you’re done shouting her name, she says nothing to either absolve or vindicate you.

You’re not sure why this is hitting you so hard. When your matesprit died, you grieved, and you broke many of your belongings in the subsequent rage, but you understood that death was a part of life, that Lyraae was in Shangri-La now. When you had to exile Horuss, you fell into a depression for a few perigees, but he had to be exiled. He allowed a heretic to escape.

You kneel over the body in your quarters.

You ease Latula’s eyes shut with two of your fingers. Now, she could be getting some well-earned sleep. But she isn’t. You know she isn’t.  
  
_Neophyte Redglare isn’t the only one who will not sleep again,_ you think to yourself.  
  
You got into your recuperacoon earlier in the morning, to maybe get an hour of diffident shut-eye, but all you saw was a razor sharp smile. A troll with nearly shoulder length hair, wearing a small pair of red glasses. One who reached out to shoosh-pap you.  
  
When you jumped out of your recuperacoon, wondering if (hoping that?) she’d somehow sit at the base of your recuperacoon, wrinkling her nose at the sopor slime dripping off you, slime she would have reminded you to change, she continued to lay on your floor.

Unknowing. Unmoving.  
  
You kneel over her again, and move her head, in order to straighten her neck.  
  
Then, you sit next to the body, take her hand, close your eyes, but the tears will not come when you need them most. Perhaps, you’ve been the Grand Highblood for too long. Presided over so many deaths that they’re more monotony than tragedy.  
  
“I shouldnta put you on this everfuckin’ case,” you tell Latula, and of course, you get no response.  
  
You let her hand drop, and sit against one of the walls of your respiteblock, your legs bent at the knee.  
  
When you close your eyes, you can see a little girl in a frayed tunic calling for her lusus, wandering desolate territory, her face caked with dirt. She has been nearly blinded by the sun when you find her.

 _“Ajude-me?”_ she asks in one of the many regional dialects that midbloods have. _“Por favor?”_

When you do not understand, she switches to Common.

“I can’t find my lusus,” she says. “I can’t _see_  or _smell_ her.  _Onde estou exactamente?_ ”

Everyone in your squadron is a seasoned culler, and any one of you can bash that wiggler’s head in, especially considering that you’ve found her in territory generally occupied by trolls with no love for the Empire. You gaze at the wiggler, and her wide, injured eyes.

“What-fuckin'-ever,” you tell her. “We’ll help you, long as you ain't take us too far outta our motherfucking way.”

She smiles wide and grateful at all of you.

Later, it strikes you just exactly how unafraid she was of you and your righteous siblings. For that lack of fear, she was either desperate or borderline suicidal. Every troll knows about subjugglators and laughassassins from almost the moment they can walk on two legs.  
  
Her lusus nearly immolates you for your efforts to reunite them, once the girl has curled up against one of its wings.

Such is life.  
  
Then, this wiggler, who insists on following you back to the fortress in a show of both gratitude and curiosity, well, she’s something else entirely.  
  
Laughassassin Phiodi compares her to lice. Once she shows up, it’s almost impossible to get rid of her, she’s pretty good at hiding when she has the inclination, and she would probably taste okay mixed with grub jelly.  
  
At the alarm on Latula’s face - you’ve since learned her hatchling name - you have to explain that Phiodi’s just fucking around. By that point, anyone who wants to harm a hair on her head will have to answer to you. You cull heretics and blasphemers, not jank-ass tiny fucking wigglers, no matter how annoying they can be. Such a death would almost certainly be rejected by the Messiahs, at least you think so.  
  
“Some joke,” she mutters.  
  
And in exchange for saving her life, Latula pledges her own to you. Normally you would release her from such a nonsensical promise, fucksake, she can’t be older than three or four sweeps old when she makes it, but other trolls are watching. Your family. And all those dedicated to the Mirthful Messiahs take oaths quite seriously.  
  
So, equal parts annoyed and terrified, you accept her offer, but tell her that the best way she can serve you is to keep her ass out of trouble.  
  
Most of the time, when she comes to the fortress expecting orders, you tell her to go back to her hive and stay there before you change your mind and decide to turn her into paint.  
  
The threat stops scaring her a few perigees before she turns seven. When you find out she’s planning to take the entrance exam for legislacerator training when she turns nine, that she’s begun studying for it, you nearly faint on the spot from the worst panic attack on Alternia.

That little thing becoming a legislacerator? Oh Messiahs, please, no.  
  
It’s so bad that Horuss has to pap you for a while. You think the kinky fucker gets off on it.  
  
You shoulda probably just turned that girl into paint while you had the chance, you think to yourself. It would have been better for your blood pressure, for the throbbing headache you need painkillers to soften.  
  
Meanwhile, you and Horuss mutually agree to never mention that quadrant vacillation again. You are kismeses, for fuck’s sake.  
  
Here, in the present, you gaze down on your moirail’s form once more.  
  
“I hope to fuck, wherever you’ve motherfuckin’ found yourself, there _ain’t_ no energy grubs,” you tell Latula. “Shits are gonna rot your teeth.”  
  
You sit there, gazing at her, for so long that you don’t notice when your legs have begun to fall asleep.  
  
Someone knocks at the door of your quarters. Someone you’re probably gonna cull for interrupting… whatever the fuck it is that you’re doing.  
  
“The Grand Highblood is not to up an’ fuckin’ be disturbed, now or ever,” you call, loud enough that the troll on the other side of the door should be able to hear you.  
  
“It’s Alshat,” comes the reply, with the barest hint of exasperation in her tone.  
  
Fuck. Your foremost advisor, ambassador, and ex-auspistice, having borne the latter title until you had to exile Horuss.  
  
Alshat can come in, you guess. You trust her. You tell her so.  
  
When she enters, she takes one look at you, sitting on the floor, and dead Latula, lying a meter away. She puts a tentative hand on your shoulder and sighs.  
  
“This here? Not healthy,” she finally says, dropping the "more dignified", Common Alternian manner of speech she reserves for interacting with shitbloods and brinesuckers. She’d used it constantly when you and Horuss were kismeses, and she was your auspistice. “Ain’t even in the same fuckin’ district as healthy, Grand Highblood.”  
  
“Yeah, and?”  
  
What’s she gonna do about it? Why did she care? Why does she still care?  
  
Once you were done culling every single lowblood who had helped hang Latula - except for her own kismesis, who was naturally horrified when she came down from the mind control - Alshat helped you carry Latula’s body back to the subjugglator fortress.  
  
You needed no assistance in carrying a body so small that it could have been that of an older wiggler, but Alshat kept you moving forward, and probably kept you from having a nervous breakdown.  
  
Then, she asked you what you planned to do with Latula. You didn’t know, you still don’t know, and it’s been over a day.  
  
“You got forces waiting on your orders,” she says.  
  
“Fuckin’ gave them their orders. Hunt down Mindfang and bring her to me. I want her alive. I wanna see the light leave her eyes after I'm up an' done with her. An' that shit's gonna take a _while._ ”  
  
Alshat shakes her head.  
  
“All respect on your name, but you’re fixin’ to send out subjugglators needed at their posts on some kinda revenge quest?”  
  
“So what?”  
  
“Shit’s unsound tactics and you know it, I know you know it,” Alshat says. She looks down at Latula, and a flicker of emotion crosses her features. She’s quick to compose herself. “This here is not why you were made Grand Highblood.”  
  
Your eyes narrow.  
  
“We both know why I was made Grand Highblood. Had jack shit to do with plans or tactics.”  
  
A few hundred sweeps ago, when the Meenah rose to power, the last Grand Highblood insisted that his allegiance was to ex-Empress Piatri, who was defeated with underhanded and - to some - illegal tactics.  
  
So Meenah speared him through the ‘pusher with her 2x3dent, and demanded to know who the second in command was, even as she continued to brandish her weapon at the group of subjugglators she’d massed.  
  
Yes, all of you could have probably culled her if you’d joined forces, but all of you were too gobsmacked by both the Grand Highblood and Piatri’s demise to come up with such a plan.  
  
When nobody answered, she threatened to randomly cull twenty percent of you.  
  
Nobody said a word. Not even the legitimate second in command. You don’t blame them. Not when all of you still thought such an admission would mean being culled.  
  
And, for all you knew, she would have culled twenty percent of you anyway. All the subjugglators and laughassassins, even the initiates, eliminated a good chunk of Meenah’s supporters when Meenah first challenged Piatri.  
  
But, finally, horrified at the thought of the death of your family, you stepped forward. Nine sweeps old, thin, and barely able to hold up your club.  
  
“I am the motherfucking second, Empress,” you’d said, hoping you sounded more confident than you felt. “It’s me.”

The trolls around you gazed at you with newfound respect.  
  
The Empress smiled her ruthless little smile, as if she knew you were bullshitting. How could she not have? Who in their right mind would entrust such a duty to a nine sweeps old?  
  
Nevertheless, she extended her 2x3dent, and tapped you once on each shoulder with it.  
  
“Do you swear fealty to me and me alone?” she asked.  
  
“Yes, Empress.”  
  
Then, she raised her weapon aloft.  
  
“The Grand Highblood is dead,” she said. “Glory to the Grand Highblood.”  
  
You hadn’t known why she’d gone along then, but now you figure it’s because as young as you were, it’d be easier to get you to do her bidding, as opposed to elder subjugglators and laughassassins, who would have been more set in their ways.  
  
The older purplebloods in your ranks listen to and respect you because you saved them from what they thought was certain death, Alshat included. Back when Meenah took the throne, Alshat was thirteen sweeps old.

And the younger ones listen to you because the older ones do. Your soldiers, your family, they would probably walk off a cliff if you ordered it now.  
  
But then? Your position of leadership was a mere fluke, issuing from a moment of reckless bravery. Surely, the tall, solemn subjugglator in front of you knows that. You have a half mind to tell her to fix her paint. She looks as if she's been crying.  
  
“The circumstances were right unorthodox, but you’re still the troll up an’ givin’ the orders,” she says. “As your advisor, your second in command, I gotta hold your ass back from acting reckless. You ain’t stupid, so you know you ain’t gotten your think on about this, I know you know.”  
  
She’s right. You hate it, but she’s right.  
  
“Fine,” you say, through gritted teeth. “What do you suggest?”  
  
If the emotion on her face when she first looked over Latula’s supine form had been a mere flicker, now it’s become a small but steady flame.  
  
She peers down at the younger troll with her lips set in one thin, remorseful line. She and Latula may have encountered each other infrequently over the last seventy sweeps, but neither had a negative word to say about the other.  
  
“Quads won’t abandon quads, family won't abandon motherfucking family, and damn well shouldn’t, but Redglare can’t just lie on your floor forever. Shit’s hazardous, Grand Highblood. Dorsum and I, we’ll help you. We’ll go and get her body to the incinerator,” she says. “If you feel up to it, come with. No shame if you can’t.”  
  
You imagine Latula pushed down a chute and turned to ash, all perfunctory-like, as if she meant nothing to anyone. Maybe a few words said for her, but nothing more.  
  
You recall her smile, the ease with which she zipped through the districts on her skateboard, and the way her eyes flashed in anger when you interrupted her study of legal briefs. How she took on every assignment you gave her, no matter how potentially lethal. Always determined to prove herself, no matter how many times she had. Somehow able to knock you on your ass every now and then when you two strifed to keep her in practice.  
  
Sure, much of her blood is on Mindfang’s hands, but a great deal of it is also on yours. You gave the order, and she followed it straight to her doom. You gastric sac turns when you look at this tealblood, who will never again deride the paint on your walls, call you a taintchafing bastard, or pap you and hold you back from getting your murder on when someone needs to.  
  
You will not see Latula treated so disrespectfully, in life, death or otherwise. You find your voice, and hold Alshat in your stare as you make your wishes known. She shakes almost imperceptibly, nervous.  
  
You are no longer that small nine sweeps old who stepped forward when nobody else would. You are someone else entirely, a troll whose very appearance elicits a primal fear.  
  
“I want full motherfuckin’ Mirthful rites for her,” you tell Alshat. “Everything by the damn book.”  
  
She stares at you for a long time, as if she cannot quite believe what she’s hearing.  
  
“Rites are for _dedicates_ to Mirthful Messiahs, whose actions further the coming of the Dark Carnival. You can’t just--”  
  
“I ain’t think you’re gettin’ the gravity of the situation. I am the Grand Highblood!” you shout. Much as you despise pulling rank on Alshat Ziolda, of all trolls, you realize this may be necessary. “I say Latula gets full damn rites, so y’all better not get it twisted! She’s worked under my instruction for almost her whole life, she might as well have up and been in service to our Messiahs. She’s earned her damn trip to Shangri-La, alright?”  
  
Because above all, Latula is… _was…_ your moirail, one of the first trolls you let yourself give a flying fuck about in a long time. And when push came to shove, that little teal girl always had your back.  
  
You glance again at her. Still dead, her mouth half open, her lips beginning to pale.  
  
Alshat shakes her head at you, but ultimately acquiesces, probably to get you to stop shouting.  
  
“Rank and file ain’t gonna be pleased about this,” she says. “But I’ll get ‘em to simmer down. You just get her ready for the rites.”  
  
You sit on the floor again, staring at absolutely nothing.  
  
Alshat puts one of her large hands on your head.  
  
“Kurloz?”  
  
That’s gotta be the first time she’s used your hatchling name in at least a hundred sweeps.  
  
Yeah, yeah, prepare the body. You got this. That’s exactly what you tell her.  
  
You’re gonna have to prepare the body. The body of a moirail you let die. You can’t get it out of your head.  
  
Maybe you should go with Alshat, to explain things to the family. No doubt she’s gonna face all kinds of push-back when she informs them of the shit that’s about to go down. Nevertheless, Alshat can hold her own.  
  
Once, you saw her use a femur to cave in the head of a Sufferist defector. Several, in fact. Defectors, not femurs.  
  
She can definitely hold her own.  
  
You scour your sylladex for clean clothing to wear to this ceremony, and one of the first things you find is a gauzy teal dress, one that would never fit you, one that never belonged to you. You think it came with a red belt, but you can't be sure.  
  
Maybe you’ll look for it later. Knowing your sylladex, you won’t find it for twenty sweeps.  
  
You fall to your knees, hold the fabric to your face, and do nothing but lie on your side for five minutes.

Latula wore this to a party after those blasphemous revolutionaries - the mutant, his companions, and anyone else who decided to join them - were brought to justice, almost sixty sweeps ago.  
  
You recall the polite but grave expression on her face, the way she leans against the wall and only joins the revelry when prompted. You assume it's because, due to the way she's handled the case of the mutant, the Empress said she would personally see to it that Latula never rise above the rank of a neophyte legislacerator, rendering all Latula's efforts meaningless.  
  
You think that’s overkill, especially since all she ever did was follow the orders she was given. It’s not her fault that an open execution resulted in the escape of one prisoner, and the exile of an archeradictator.  
  
What a fool your kismesis has been, pulling that stunt with that arrow. You wonder if he’s dead yet. He probably wishes he was, if not.  
  
After you and Latula return to your respiteblock, mostly to knock back shot glasses of moonshine her kismesis had either made or had a hand in making, and to mock every single troll you’d encountered at the gala, she strips down to her undergarments. Partially because she’s pretty drunk, and partially because she can hardly get into your recuperacoon without taking off her clothes. Not unless she wants to stain them.  
  
You make some mocking comment about the little dragons embroidered on her panties, and she’d elbows you in the sternum. She leaves the dress on your floor before she gets into your recuperacoon, and you shove it into your sylladex when you stumble upon it later, in case she ever wants it back.  
  
She never asks. She hates dresses, although she almost likes this one, judging from the fact that she’s worn it voluntarily.  
  
Now, in the present, you set the dress aside, and hope it still fits her. You’d have her wear her legislacerator uniform on her pyre, but the one she died in has practically been torn to shreds, and you don't know where you'd find another. So that’s not going to work.

It’s a motherfucking miracle that you found the dress on your first try, anyway. Life is frequently miraculous. The jury is still out about death.  
  
Yeah, that’s a blasphemy, and you know it is, to suggest that Shangri-La be something other than a land of glory, but right now…  
  
Right now, you wish you could have reached those shores before she did.  
  
Assuming she gets there, you wonder if she’ll teach your matesprit - died a hundred and seventy sweeps ago, and you never found another troll like them, not even with the drones on your ass to fill buckets - how to play blackjack. If she does, she’s probably gonna cheat. Latula believed in fair play for everything except card games.  
  
Half a damn hour later, you finally locate your full subjugglator regalia - fuck your Fetch Modus, seriously - reserved for special occasions like the ends of major sieges, or for when the Empress decides to call. You hang it up on a hook, for later.  
  
You spend half an hour in the ablution trap, and finally dress yourself in what you wear more or less day in, day out. Not as ornate as your formal gear, but you doubt anyone important is going to make an appearance tonight. Even if they should. Even if everyone should show up to witness Latula Pyrope's rites, because she was one of the greatest trolls on Alternia.  
  
You spare another glance at her, bend over her, and gingerly ease the torn legislacerator uniform off her body.  
  
A silver necklace drops out of one of its pockets. Two pendants on the necklace. One’s half of a red, heart shape, the other half of which is around Latula’s neck.  
  
But the other pendant?  
  
That’s a mark of _heresy,_ the irons of the flogging jut, a _Sufferist symbol._  
  
All the blood drains from your face, a vertiginous _“What if?_ ” overtaking you.  
  
It cannot be Latula’s. You’d know if it was hers. You were her moirail, and  _she would have said something if she’d ever started espousing heresy. Surely she would have known that you wouldn't have been able to even think of culling her for it._  
  
Maybe it was her matesprit’s.

It had to have been, You don’t remember her name at the moment, only that Latula used to say that she put her ideals before her relationship, and that she would have never been flushed for her were that not the case.  
  
You chew on your lower lip.  
  
If your memory serves you right, your forces culled Aquila Zibanu - yes, that's the name of Latula's ex-matesprit - and many other trolls for high treason, as they sat gathered in Orolai Taliva’s dusty trinket shop, discussing rebellion.  
  
Latula would have told you if she’d known what the woman’s ideals were. Or at least lied badly to cover her ass if she actually had information. You're certain of that. You can bullshit a great many trolls, but you cannot bullshit your moirail.  
  
Tears threaten at the corners of your eyes.  
  
You hold them back.  
  
You sigh, as you think of what to do. Not about the pendant, but…  
  
Aside from this dress, what should Latula wear?  
  
You recall a place where you and she used to meet, and you get an inkling of an idea. First, though, you have to leave for a while. Not for long. Just long enough for you to get what you need.  
  
“Not fuckin’ abandoning you,” you tell Latula. “But I gotta do something, ya dig?”  
  
She meets your assurances with silence.  
  
On your way out of the fortress, many of your subordinates greet you with a _“whoop! whoop!_ ” of respect, but some do nothing but stare at you. You tell them you’re going out on official business, and not to follow.  
  
However, Zildar Griaka has the absolute motherfucking globes to walk with you, seeming displeased.  
  
“It’s true, then?” he asks.  
  
“Lotta motherfucking things’re true. Make it specific, I got no time for games.”  
  
“Ain’t tryna put question to your judgment, Grand Highblood, but since when do we give _shitbloods_ full rites?”  
  
You’d cull him on the spot if it would not be bad for morale.  
  
“Since I fuckin’ said so, you get?” you reply. “Might wanna fuck off, unless you’re fixin’ to get your rites today, too.”  
  
That sends him walking briskly in the opposite direction.  
  
Although you refrained from physical violence, you should not have put your anger on display like that. It’s all well and good to unleash the full force of your fury on your enemies? But the trolls you lead, unless they screw up something vital? That’s not right. Especially since you can’t help but feeling like you’re walking on thin ice at the moment.  
  
Obviously Alshat did something to keep the family in line, but what if it isn’t enough?  
  
And all over one dead tealblood. Your moirail, but still.  
  
At least if things don’t work out, if some motherfucker stages a coup, maybe you’ll see her in Shangri-La.  
  
You do not take long to reach your destination, a garden fairly far away. Your resolve makes the journey short. Your resolve and the rickshaw you hire, pulled by a rustblood so terrified of you that she offers you a discount as long as you swear not to kill anyone in her clade, as if you'd ever remember.  
  
Still, you make your promises, and try to keep your eyes focused on the floor.  
  
Look around at your surroundings, and you can see a nine-ish sweeps old troll with pointy little horns, a skateboard tucked under one arm, and a textbook tucked under the other, her hip-length, straight hair rippling behind her. She mouths the syllables of your name.  
  
She stares at you as the rickshaw passes, smiles, and waves with one slim hand.  
  
Then, you see a slightly older troll in a legislacerator uniform, maybe fifteen or so sweeps shy of middle age, eating from a wooden skewer. She has shorter hair and a steely gaze. She mock-salutes you, and flips you off.  
  
The last time you spoke to Latula, right before she left to apprehend Mindfang, she ate from a skewer of grubmeat as she went over her plans for the acquisition of Marquise Mindfang for the umpteenth time.  
  
You should have said something to her then. Told her how motherfucking proud you were of her. Told her that she did not have to be the one to do this.  
  
Why did you send her? You could have sent anyone else.  
  
Latula lied to you, you realize, bitter. She said everything would be fine, even smirked at you, at all the trolls seated in the arena. Aranea Serket stood on the platform of the gallows, stripped of her finery, her hair a great tangle around her face, as Latula read the charges against her.  
  
Then, a flicker of blue light, a bunch of lowbloods who had stood up to join the fray, and it was Latula’s neck in the noose.  
  
Here, now, the rickshaw passes right through the figure. The tealblood, her head cocked to one side, adjusts her glasses and shrugs.  
  
She falls to the ground and out of sight. You look at the spot where she would have fallen and see nothing.  
  
Gone.

Again.  
  
A strangled wail of hatred, despondence, and confusion threatens to rip its way from your throat. You keep it together. Barely, but you do.  
  
You might be going insane, you think. More insane than usual, anyway.  
  
You screw your eyes shut for nearly the entire remainder of the ride. What you cannot see cannot hurt you.  
  
When the rickshaw driver drops her poles at the location you gave her, you pay her fifty percent more than you’d offered in the first place. Mostly because you’re grateful that you didn’t have to walk the whole way, and were able to close your eyes.  
_  
Who knows what you might have seen if you hadn’t?_  
  
Lowblood vendors peddle their wares not far away, the air teeming with the spicy smell of cooking food. You wonder if any of the stalls sell candied acanthodrilidae, but, judging from the terrified looks most of these trolls are giving you, you probably won’t have the chance to find out. The first troll you ask picks up a bag of caegars, her pay for the day, and takes off running before you can even finish your sentence.  
  
You don’t begrudge them their fear. They _should_ be afraid of you. You are not soft. You are not kind. You would not want to be such a troll. You are the Grand Highblood. You treat your quads, your righteous siblings, and certain wigglers well - at least well enough to not cull them where they stand - but that’s about it. Everyone else is potential paint.   
  
Because you are here, on Alternia, to carry out the orders of the Empress and keep the lowbloods in their place. Some consider your very presence to be an omen of death, and you are perfectly fine with that.  
  
Nevertheless, it makes certain things tiresome.  
  
You sigh, and look back toward the remaining vendors.  
  
Candied acanthodrilidae. You only ever ate it when Latula came by. It was her favorite food, and she always, grudgingly, shared with you. You’d eat more than she was willing to share, she’d call you a grape flavored bulgesucker, you’d make a diamond sign with your pointer and middle fingers, and all would be more or less forgiven.  
  
You resist the urge to cull the first troll to look at you funny.  
  
The nearby garden is a good place to think, what with the peaceful silence, and the breeze, but you are not here to think. In the last twenty-four hours, you may have done enough thinking for a lifetime, and are, quite frankly, tired of the exercise.  
  
Instead, you’re looking for two different types of flowers. You know they’re here somewhere.  
  
What an absurd figure you must cut, dressed for battle, your gigantic horns spiralling skyward, your hair arranged in braided black tendrils, your black and white paint applied as meticulously as possible, as you scour a public garden in a midblood district looking for fucking _flowers_ of all things.  
  
In mind’s eye, you can see what you want to do with them, what you must do with them. Latula rather liked flowers by the time you considered a moirallegiance with her, even if she’d found them to be pollen-spreading, allergy-exacerbating nuisances back when she could still properly see them.  
  
So you’ll make a crown of teal gladiolus, and find a way to braid lavender into her hair. Maybe in Shangri-La, she’ll be able to see them once more, and know that you never forgot how she adored them.  
  
You wonder if this, this anguish, is why the Grand Highblood preceding you discouraged all of you from quadranting outside of your hemocaste. Less heartbreak that way. Fewer trolls outliving their quadrantmates.

Didn’t help you as far as your matesprit, Lyraae, a laughassassin, was concerned, but anyway…

(You don’t want to think about that, either.)  
  
Once you find what you’re looking for, you elect to carry the flowers in your arms in your arms, gingerly so as not to crush them, mostly because if you put them in your everfucking sylladex, there’s no telling when you’ll find them again. Normally, the serendipity of your Fetch Modus fills you with a slow sort of wonder, the contemplation of miracles, but time isn’t exactly on your side at the moment.  
  
You pay another driver to transport you back to your fortress, and this one is either unhinged or desperate enough to drop you off right at the wrought-iron gates of the fortress, and refrains from making any small talk. You pay them triple.  
  
Instead of the usual guards, Alshat’s sitting on the ground near the giant double doors, swigging from a bottle of Faygo. For a paranoid moment, you’re scared she’s been exiled by the family, and that’s why she’s outside, at least until she gives you a gentle nod of recognition and something that could pass for a smile if it were given by someone other than she.  
  
As it stands, it’s just creepy as all fuck.  
  
“Grand Highblood,” she says, once you’re close enough to hear her. “Up an’ carried out your orders, and most of the family can dig it. But the ones who ain’t with it don’t look like they’re gonna start any shit. Alla them understand. Redglare weren’t one of us motherfuckers, but she deserves mad respect. Least everyone agrees on that.”  
  
“Great,” you say.  
  
Alshat looks as if she wants to touch you again, her hand beginning to reach out, until she changes her mind. You give her the extra flowers you could not possibly put in Latula's hair.  
  
“You good?” she asks, then.  
  
You don’t answer. You merely return to your quarters, and set the flowers down on the floor near Latula’s head.  
  
If you think of her as nothing more than a body, dressing her becomes easier. You wash her with water from your ablution trap, and then pull her into the flimsy teal garment, keeping down the anguish you feel when you notice the thin bracelet you gave her, glinting on her wrist. A small diamond engraved on the metal.  
  
You will have time enough to sit on your throne and and gorge yourself falling-down-intoxicated on sopor slime pies after all of this is over. Right now, you have to keep your focus.  
  
When you lower her back to the floor, the fabric of the dress fans out around her.  
  
You wait for her to open her eyes and call you a weenie, but all you hear are the sounds coming from outside. Phiodi barks orders at his laughassassins, probably making them march in formation or something equally stupid. You rather like Phiodi. Sometimes he reminds you of Horuss.  
  
You must empty nearly your entire sylladex before you give up on finding shoes for her to wear. It’s not like she’s about to notice.  
  
How will the Messiahs recognize Latula when she enters Shangri-La, though. With that gray face, without a club? You take out your jar of white face paint, realizing exactly what must be done.  
  
Latula was never a subjugglator, a laughassassin, or even an initiate.  
  
And as much as you are totally disregarding the rules for this ceremony, there are some that must be obeyed. No black paint for her, nor a full face of white.  
  
You take a brush, dip it into the paint, and cover Latula’s eyelids with white, so that she might see again when she reaches Shangri-La. Then, you look down at the marks the noose made around her neck, and cover them as well, having to turn her to do it, so that she might be similarly be uninjured once she gets there.  
  
Lastly, you paint a diamond on the back of her left hand, with your looping sign in its center, so all will know, alive or dead, exactly what this troll meant to you.  
  
Next, come the flowers. You take hold of a hair brush. and your hand shakes.  
  
You remember Horuss brushing a seven sweeps old Latula’s long hair, mostly because she had “impeccable manners, Highblood, and an unrivaled ability to sit still”. One hundred strokes, slow and painstaking. You doubt you’ll need that many now, and you don’t.

With the utmost care, you string the lavender into her hair, mostly because it’s almost impossible to braid such ruler-straight hair. It takes a while, but you don’t mind.  
  
Go back several decades to a twelve sweeps old Latula dancing with your fellow laughassassins and subjugglators, during a festival held to celebrate the end of the sweep, and to request that all the righteous who had died during the last sweep be welcomed, at the end of days, to the Dark Carnival.  
  
You try to keep her away from the lowblood sacrifices and tributes that constitute the first part of the celebration but Latula’s no fool. She has the good sense, and is probably mildly intoxicated enough on Faygo, not to ask where the platters of meat set out near your throne came from.  
  
She’s not nearly as hesitant to bring the pain as she had been when she was younger. She’s dueled some of her fellow neophyte legislacerators over case placements and even culled the few who refused to back down, the ones who sought a duel to the death.  
  
_"Better them than me,"_ she tells you. _"If you can’t finish a fight, why start it?"_  
  
You’re so proud of this young troll.  
  
While you make her laugh and go silent in turns with tales of your conquests, two laughassassins: Xegnus, and Asyizo, and a subjuggulator: Mercer, are in charge of keeping the music going until everyone passes the fuck out on the floor. Those thee barely scrape average as soldiers, but give them something that produces music and they can make miracles.

You do not cull them for being sub-par in combat, because combat is not all your forces should master. These artists, they’re perfect for the end of each sweep, and any other time you need music to accompany your tribute to the Messiahs.  
  
Earlier, Phiodi gave Latula a purple tunic to wear so she wouldn’t feel out of place, one with little bells on it that jingle when she dances.  
  
And after consuming way more of the contents of Deneb’s downstairs “distillery” than strictly advisable, Nasira pulls Latula aside and makes a triangular streak of white paint on her lower lip along with little white dots down the bridge of her nose.  
  
“There,” she says, laughing. “Now you can be one of us. One of the family.”  
  
“Family,” Latula repeats, a perplexed air about her. She’s never had a family before, except her lusus. Her peers at the Imperial Academy of Law are too cutthroat and wary to accept her as one of their own, even now, when she excels. Especially when she excels.

The one quadrant she’s filled, she’s filled with a drunken oliveblood who wants to study medicine. No serious competition between them, even if there’s pitch enmity. Once, Latula offered to introduce the girl to you, and sensibly, the oliveblood had declined.

Latula dances to the music your family plays, even singing a song only she knows, one not in Common. Most are too intoxicated to notice. She and Nasira dance so closely that you wonder if those two won’t end up quadranted in the future.

Of course, there are those who do not approve of her paint. But no troll would be stupid enough to call blasphemy with you and out and about.   
  
Even Alshat and Horuss are in on the party, and they’re about as good at being festive as you are at remembering to clean out your recuperacoon on a regular basis. You manage to get Horuss to dance with you, in an attempt to loosen him up.  
  
Okay, more like you say him something akin to, “Right here’s one of the greatest motherfuckin’ generals of our age, my fuckin’ kismesis, and he’s scared of a dance. Can you fuckers believe this shit?”  
  
That gets him to his feet.  
  
“Please refrain from being surprised should I accidentally step on your toes, Highblood,” he says, tone laced with displeasure.  
  
“I fuckin' dare you to try.”

So Horuss steps on your feet once or twice, looking immediately apologetic afterwards, almost too apologetic, as if he is not sorry at all. You move to punch him, but he blocks easily. The thrum of battle sings in your veins, and all he does is give you a dignified little smile. How you would like to wipe it off his face.  
  
What you do not expect is that another troll will rise to meet you while you’re dancing, raising his club above his head, and trying to bring it down to smash your skull.  
  
You’re facing away from him, and don’t not see him coming. And Horuss, well-honed as his reflexes are, is also taken by surprise.

But before this would-be assassin could complete the motion, you see a flash of silver.  
  
Oqteki Creyix, one of the subjugglators under your direct authority, falls to the floor, the sharpened end of half a cane embedded in his throat. Latula dislodges the blade, and this time, jams it through his eye, only removing it when he stops spasming.  
  
The festivities grind to halt while a few of you try to ascertain what the fuck just happened. According to pretty much every witness, Oqteki was definitely trying to cull you.  
  
Only speculation on your part, but maybe it’s because you had given the order that accidentally killed his moirail a perigee ago.  
  
You probably should be more shaken by the attempt on your life, but you are the Grand Highblood. You're certain many trolls pray, before they hit their recuperacoon in the morning, that something catastrophic will happen to you. You order the party to continue. Your life is not worth denying tribute to the Messiahs.  
  
The music starts up again, Asyizo shaking her head and chuckling at the whole thing, and before long, everything's almost normal again.  
  
Latula dances like her life depends on it, frenetic, taking any partner who will have her, laughing the whole time, and never seeming to tire. Occasionally you glance at her, and her eyes betray an inebriated sort of terror. But she keeps going at least until those ghastly drinks Nasira's mixed, a combination of Faygo and spirits, catches up with her.  
  
You find her half lying and half sitting against the door to your private quarters, singing the song she’d started to sing earlier, when Phiodi was accompanying her decently on Asyizo's drums. If not for her singing, you might have tripped over her. She slurs the lyrics - which are already nigh-on incomprehensible to you - terribly, her eyes glazed over. She keeps singing. Shit, without the singing, you would have actually stepped on her by accident.

 _"...Se alguém por mim pergunta,_  
_diga que eu só vou voltar,  
_ _quando eu me encontrar..."_

She stops when she finally notices you. Tries to get to her feet out of respect, and slides back down the wall.

“Kurloz,” she murmurs. "Grand Highblood."  
  
“Latula, what the motherfuck you think you’re doing?” you ask. “Door’s unlocked. You can lie down inside where no motherfucker'll mistake you for part of the floor.”  
  
“Not in your clade, Grand Highblood. Not proper.”  
  
“So? Shit, you’ve been in my respiteblock a million times.”  
  
“Not without you.”  
  
Latula drags herself to a sitting position. The bells on her tunic jingle. She mops the tears from her eyes with the back of her arm.  
  
You sit down beside her.  
  
“You good?”  
  
She stares up at you with tearful, unfocused eyes.  
  
“You could have died, Kurloz. You almost died! If I hadn't--”  
  
“Yeah, but I ain’t abouta die so easy,” you replied. “You ain’t gotta worry about me.”  
  
“I do. I think you know why.”  
  
Yeah, yeah you know.

You know she's confused, she feels like she owes you, and she just needs some time to realize that. Plenty of trolls would make a better moirail than you.  
  
You thumb the tears away from Latula’s face.  
  
You aren't about to lie to her and say that you are not as pale as the clouds for her, because if anyone deserves the truth, it's this troll. So you say nothing either way.

You just nod and murmur, “Yeah, I guess.”

Then, she lets you carry her drunk ass into your quarters and throw her into your recuperacoon.

In the here and now, you imagine her marveling at how many flowers you’d managed to put in her hair. And once you’ve secured all the lavender, you finish the crown of teal gladiolus, and put it on her head.  
  
You take out your communicator and ping Alshat, feeling a hundred sweeps older for what you're about to say.  
  
“It’s time,” you say.  
  
“Understood.”  
  
No reassurances. No eulogies. No condolences. Just a simple reply. Alshat knows you better than most. She  _would,_ though.  
  
You pick Latula's body up, and carry it outside.  
  
The platform they’re using using to carry her to the beach, well, it’s made of palm wood, lightweight. Two signs carved onto the surface she'll lie on. Latula’s own sign, and, below that, a parabola with a little tilde set horizontally through it, the sign of the Messiah.  
  
You lay Latula down on the platform, place her cane flat against her body, and fold her hands over it. The fabric of her dress billows in the strong wind.  
  
You beg Alshat to let you be one of the trolls to carry the platform to the pyre. She says no, absolutely not. With her luck, you’ll run and throw yourself onto the pyre, and none of the family will be able to put you out in time.  
  
You refrain from pointing out that you could still do that either way.  
  
“You gotta perform your own fuckin' duties, Grand Highblood.”  
  
As Grand Highblood, your job is to walk at the fore of the procession, to chant prayers and praises to the Messiahs, so that they might know that the troll on the platform was truly honorable. Chant you do, your voice thick, about carnivals and battle, injustice and retribution, pasts and futures, blessings and curses, music and silence, heresy and righteousness.  
  
It is a sound that gives the family momentary pause. Sure, you’ve lost many trolls, felt their deaths acutely, and sung these words so often that you could probably do it high on enough sopor to cull someone. However this is the first time in a long while that it feels as if someone is tearing your bloodpusher out of your chest as you chant.  
  
Behind you, four trolls carry the platform: one for each corner. Mercer, Alshat, Ishero, and Algedi.

Behind them, Phiodi carries a giant container of some kind of liquid. Kerosene, maybe?  
  
Nasira walks at your side, her paint the slightest bit smudged, but she is otherwise dry-eyed, and carrying a lit torch. Certainly she’s been weeping less than Phiodi. She gives you a small nod of recognition when she notices you looking her way.  
  
You glance over your shoulder, and while it takes a whole lot to shock you, color you surprised. Something like a few hundred trolls, all laughassassins and subjugglators, have shown up for this, to send Latula to a land of righteousness and plenty none of you have seen.  
  
The bearers of the platform place it on the pyre, set up far enough away from the water that high tide will not put it out, but far enough away from any buildings to prevent them from accidentally catching fire.  
  
You ask Alshat for the leftover flowers you’d given her to put in her sylladex, and she hands them over.  
  
You climb onto the pyre and scatter petals over the woman on the platform. There are so many things you want to say, both to her, and to your congregation, but your thinkpan is drawing blanks at the moment. You kiss Latula’s forehead, and jump down.  
  
You turn to face everyone present.  
  
“Neophyte Legislacerator Latula Pyrope, moirail to the Grand Highblood, Kurloz Makara, matesprit to Legislacerator Aquila Zibanu, and kismesis to Attending Mediculler Zossma Paeonn, I motherfuckin’ release you from this shithole known as Alternia, so you might up an’ ascend to Shangri-La,” you intone, somehow managing to give the proper statement. “I confer upon you the directions to this Carnival, that you will, at last know the way, when you must motherfucking know it most.”

Phiodi puts the kerosene down, takes out his fiddle, and plays a short tune.

You pour a bottle of orange Faygo around the pyre.  
  
Then, you raise your club, and shout, “Whoop! Whoop!”  
  
“Whoop! Whoop!” comes the response of the small army before you, in unison.

"Latula Pyrope!" Algedi calls.

All the other trolls present repeat what he's yelled, along with another "Whoop! Whoop!"  
  
You gesture to him, then. He makes his way onto the pyre and pours kerosene everywhere. For good measure, he also pours a healthy volume onto the base of the pyre itself. Then, he returns to the congregation, giving Nasira and her torch a wide berth.  
  
Nasira makes to light the pyre, but at the last second, you tap her shoulder, and shake your head.  
  
“Preciate what you’re doin’, but Latula was my ‘rail,” you say. “I can do this. So let me do _something_ for her. Please, sister.”  
  
Nasira looks to Alshat, who nods her approval.  
  
“Yes, Grand Highblood.”  
  
You take the torch and throw it onto the pyre, wondering for a moment if the fire will take. It does.

You sit down on the beach, as close to the conflagration as you possibly can without burning yourself.  
  
Eventually, you dismiss the family to their regular duties, even as you make not a move to do so yourself. Alshat and Ishero try to convince you to come with them, and you soundly tell them to fuck off.

You can't leave.

You won't leave, not until the end.  
  
Fifty sweeps ago, you and Latula pass a bottle of dilute spirits back and forth. Meenah’s throwing a party to celebrate the demise of all those revolutionaries who followed that mutantblood, and yeah, it’s fancy. You don’t notice it much. You have other shit on your mind.  
  
So naturally, because you hate socializing with trolls outside of your quadrants or family, and because you’re down a kismesis, you’re standing on the balcony, throwing rocks into some indigoblood’s quackbeast pond and trying to see if you can hit any of them. The indigobloods congregating by the pond, not the quackbeasts. You don’t generally have anything against quackbeasts, except for that one who ran away with your toast and grub jelly seventeen sweeps ago.  
  
Let it never be said that you do not know how to hold a grudge.  
  
Latula’s merely getting hammered because she has no future, and her life is over.  
  
“Fucking neophyte,” she says. “I’m going to be a fucking neophyte forever. After all I fucking did and I fucking gave? I follow the orders of the empress and that’s what I get? Neophyte Redglare, Imperial Failure.”  
  
“Shit sucks,” you agree, taking the bottle from her when she passes it. “Then again, the fishbitch ain’t really known for doing shit that makes any damn sense.”  
  
Latula snorts. “If Horuss heard you saying that, he’d have an embolism or something.”

It’s the first time anyone has mentioned him in a perigee. Not even Alshat has brought him up.  
  
“More like he’d try to pail the dangerous motherfuckin’ rhetoric outta me.”  
  
Latula’s not currently taking a swig at the bottle, so you have no idea what she’s choking on. When she’s finished, she rolls her eyes at you.  
  
“I miss him, you know,” she says. “He was a stuffy blueblood with a stick up his wastechute, but otherwise, he was okay.”  
  
You nod, wordlessly. He’s guilty of sky-high treason, but he was still your kismesis of a hundred sweeps, and you still have no idea why he did what he did. You hadn’t bothered to ask before you exiled him. Death would not have hurt him nearly as much as what you did, thrown him out of the Imperial Army and ordered him to live out the rest of his life in ignominy.  
  
“Me too,” you confess, because unfortunately, despite what he did, you wish he were still around.

His oliveblood is probably dead. Maybe not. You think of the way she nearly culled Latula, who was tasked with representing her during her trial. In another life, where she had not been an oliveblood, her wariness and bloodlust might have made her a good subjugglator.

A shame that she had to be a heretic. You respect the spirit of a true warrior when you encounter it.  
  
You and Latula are silent for a spell, until you remember something you want to tell her.  
  
“I wanted to fuckin’ thank you for what you did during those motherfuckin' trials. You didn’t have to do alla that shit. You didn’t have to help me.”  
  
She shrugs.  
  
“Friends help friends, don’t they?”  
  
They do. That is besides the point.  
  
You’re going to need to find a way to say this without putting your foot in your mouth. You’re no idiot, but words, unless you’re giving a sermon to the family, are not exactly your strong suit. Sometimes you envy Latula’s ability to sound so eloquent most of the time.  
  
“Remember when I up an’ fuckin told you we couldn’t be moirails because I’d just endanger you?”  
  
Latula arches an eyebrow.  
  
“I do, yes.”  
  
You would sooner face down a thousand alien soldiers armed with plasma cannons than continue this line of conversation. But, you gotta start what you finish. There’s no going back now.  
  
“Shit’s like this. During this motherfuckin’ case, I realized you’d put yourself in danger whether we were moirails or not,” you start out. “And it ain’t fair for me to ask you for favors like this when you’re not in any of my quadrants.”  
  
“That’s one way of looking at it,” she replies.  
  
“What I’m tryna say is…” You inhale. “Would you…? Do you...?”  
  
Latula rolls her eyes yet again.  
  
“Kurloz, are you asking me to be your moirail?”  
  
“If you want. Not tryna put you under any pressure or anything.”  
  
Latula’s smile comes gradually, but when it does, when a little tear rolls down her face, you want nothing more than to make her smile again.  
  
She mutters something about taintchafing shitheads who could have and probably did nearly ask that question almost ten sweeps ago, and you burst out laughing.  
  
The wind sends the fabric of her dress blowing around her legs, and she leans back against the balcony door to avoid it. You move to stand next to her. She glares at you for a minute or two, and eventually makes the diamond sign with her pointer and middle fingers.  
  
“You’re an asshole,” she says. “I should say no, just to spite you.”  
  
“Would you though, righteous sister?”  
  
Latula shakes her head. “I’m too tired to be spiteful.” She slides to a sitting position on the balcony floor. Another smile from her, this one weaker. “I accept. I’d be happier about it, but…”  
  
“...the fishbitch,” you finish.  
  
“Yeah. There’s nothing left for me here. Maybe Zossma. Maybe Aquila.”

You feel selfish for even thinking of the question you’re about to ask.

“What about me?”  
  
She reaches up to hold your hand.

“And you. I guess you’re here too, Kurloz.”

She kisses the side of your face.

You grin until she threatens to kick you in the globes.

She takes your hand, kisses the back of it, and continues to hold it.  
  
Sweeps pass, time flows inexorably forward, but you never forget that. That simple touch of her hand.  
  
You lie in the sand until the pyre is nearly spent, and then you go inside, give your soldiers their orders, and focus your sights on stamping out the Sufferists.  
  
Following a lead, you call on none other than Latula’s kismesis, but instead of having her hauled in for interrogation, you do nothing but sob and apologize for what has happened. Still wearing her white mediculler coat, although she’s clearly drunker than life, she cries with you.

“Latula was a pain in the wastechute when she wanted to be, but she didn’t deserve what happened. What I did. She was a good troll. She had principles.”

“I know.”

And then, with the resolute tone of someone who knows they will almost certainly be culled for the next thing they say, Zossma murmurs, “No, Grand Highblood, I don’t think you do.”

And maybe you don't. That's the unkindest cut of all.

Sometime after that, you stop properly noticing the passage of time.

You see blind girls in frayed tunics around certain corners, women in thin blue dresses, and bodies with snapped necks.  
  
You give orders.

You give orders.

You give orders.

Cull that troll, question this troll.  
  
You retire to your quarters and eat sopor slime pies until you feel nothing.  
  
Not even Alshat can pull you out of this, try as she might. And she tries for hundreds of sweeps. She uses logic, the bald logic of the fact that you are not the only troll who has ever lost the members of their quadrants, and withdrawing into yourself serves a grand total of fuck all.  
  
“You don't understand,” you tell her.  
  
“Don't I?” she asks. “Giving fuckin' orders in your stead 'cause you can't fuckin' be bothered? Grand Highblood, your despair ain't bringing a single troll back.”  
  
“Like I don't know that.”  
  
“You think Redglare would wanna see you like this? Look over from Shangri-La and see how fuckin' far you've fallen?”  
  
“I ain't know what else to do,” you tell Alshat.

She gives a sad shake of her head.  
  
“Then let me up an' help you," she says, and the overtones are so pale that you want to cull her where she stands.  
  
But you heed her instructions. You try to anyway, try your damndest. You throw yourself into your work, nearly become again the Grand Highblood you once were, at least up to a certain point.  
  
Alshat's right. Latula would have probably wanted you to go on, would have wanted you to fill her place in your quadrants, even.

You take Phiodi as your matesprit, somewhat enamored by his unwavering faith that the Messiahs will triumph in bringing about the Dark Carnival. You take Nasira as your kismesis, hating her for her joy, her mirth, the way she seems to dance on graves without a thought.

You never do take another moirail, though.

Sweeps upon sweeps into the future, the realization that Latula has been dead for longer than you ever knew her sends you into the deepest spell of desolation and self-loathing you've ever felt. You can hardly recall what her voice sounds like anymore.

Your rage knows no bounds. You nearly demolish your quarters entirely. You order Nasira and Phiodi out, not wanting to hurt either of them. This is not their fault. This will never be their fault. Only Alshat can even begin to talk you down, trying to physically restrain you at some point. But she can only begin. You see what you believe to be the diminutive form of a lowblood troll in your recuperacoon, and, trying your hardest to reach her, tip the whole thing over.

Once the wave of sopor settles, Alshat stands at the door to your respiteblock with absolutely nothing to say.

“Kurloz,” she whispers.

“I saw her!” you insist. “Latula. She was there!”

“Kurloz, please,” she says, reaching a hand out to pap you.

“And you’re not her!” you shout at your second in command. “You’re never gonna up an’ be my moirail, Alshat! Do me a favor, and get the fuck out!”

She obliges, quite a bit more than you’d intended her to, because that is the final time you see her.

Phiodi, now your main advisor and second in command, tells you, a few sweeps later, that she’s left Alternia entirely and set up a hive on a small moon in the absolute middle of nowhere.

Good for her that she left. You had been awful for and to her in the end, and you know this now. You do not send any squadrons to look for her. You send her a message of apology, but do not ask her to come back. If she wants to, that is her prerogative.

Much later, your most promising cavalreaper decides to lead a revolt, one that succeeds far more than the ones before it. However, those loyal to the Alternian Empire, including your forces, stamp those rebels out like a weed. One good thing comes from the rebellion. Marquise Mindfang is dead. You wish you felt more triumphant than you do. You couldn’t resurrect Latula, but maybe you could have avenged her by killing Aranea Serket yourself.

Now, even that has been taken from you.

A few hundred sweeps ago, you’d have considered that twisted justice, retribution brought down by the Messiahs in a form you couldn’t quite fathom. Now, you can’t find it within yourself to give a shit.

You hold full rites for many trolls, all family. Your voice grows hoarse from chanting. Nesira does Algedi’s makeup for the final time, watches him burn, and then tries to self-cull. You and Phiodi stop her.

“Nesira,” you murmur, feeling like a hypocrite the whole time. “Algedi would not want you to do this to yourself.”

She calls you a sack of bulges, sobs into your uniform until she runs out of tears and energy, and falls unconscious. You can't even find it in your 'pusher to hate her the way you should. You know what she's going through.

And, in the wake of the revolt, the Empress issues a new edict.

All trolls over the age of nine - except the cavern auxiliatrices and other similarly earmarked trolls - are to leave the planet. These orders to prevent something like this revolt from ever happening again.

Well, you have to hand it to Meenah. You thought you’d been driven batshit insane with age, but she has you beaten.

What can you do but heed her words, though? You could resist, but endanger the whole family.

You pile your forces into a few ships, and watch Alternia grow smaller and smaller as you head further into space.

But space cannot protect you now, because something is going to happen that will obliterate everything, no matter where it happens to be in the galaxy. You have no way of knowing that yet, however.

The clock ticks. You and your congregation pray to the Messiahs for guidance.

One night, you’re applying your paint in the mirror, getting ready to address all the family members on the ship.

But you swear that for an instant, you see a woman in East Alternian dress, with gigantic, spiraling horns, eyeing you with nothing but contempt. When you turn around to get a better look at her, you’re the only one in the room. You shake your head, several vigorous times, as if you can loosen the hold of your hallucinations with the motion.

Three perigees later, you have your usual vision of Latula standing over you, as you sit down and pore over the register of subjugglators on the various ships to which they’ve been assigned.

She regards you gravely, tears flowing down her face, and before you can reach out to her, she disappears. As she always does.

The next night, you wake at dusk, to find Nesira standing on the ship’s observation deck, and looking profoundly confused. She’s not the only one. Phiodi, Asyzio, Mercer, and two initiates are similarly perplexed.

“A meteor shower,” Asyizo breathes. “Alternia’s gonna get fuckin’ hit by meteors.”

Phiodi, who has probably been drinking spirits today, missing Alternia, lets out a small sound of discontent.

“Lucky we’re here then,” he starts out, before understanding dawns on his face. Then, he pales. “Oh my sweet Messiahs, holy fuck. It’s coming!”

You sling an arm around his shoulders and hold him close.

“What’s coming?” one of the subjugglator initiates, Vefzet, you think their name is, asks.

“The motherfuck do they teach wigglers about scripture anymore?” Mercer asks, although Vefzet is no wiggler anymore. “The Reckoning. The Vast Glub. The Dark Carnival. I can keep the shit going. Lemme know when something rings a bell.”

You smack Mercer in the shoulder with your club, maybe a little harder than intended. Nesira snorts.

“Cut it the fuck out, they asked an honest motherfuckin’ question,” you say. “Phiodi, tell everyone to find their clubs and paint. If it’s time for us to get to fuckin’ Shangri-La, we don’t need to look like shit."

You’re in the middle of drinking from your goblet of Faygo and putting the finishing touches on your paint when you feel it. Some kind of buildup in the air, the very molecules around you seeming to warp. It starts with a low thud at the base of your skull, and intensifies into a high whine.

You need to find Phiodi. You need to find Nesira. You need to face this with all of you together, but you cannot move. The air feels as if it has nearly solidified, so much denser than before.

You keep trying.

The fundamental sense of  _wrongness_ intensifies.

So you scream for your life, overloaded, and hear others doing the same in other parts of the ship. Phiodi, Nesira, Horuss, Lyraae, and  _Latula,_ you think. But the last three have been dead for a long time.

Haven't they?

Then, you cover your ears with your claws, and fall to the floor convulsing, your head thudding against the wall with every spasm. 

Eventually the screaming stops.

You lie on the floor, eyelids flickering. You can't draw a deep breath, barely any breath, for that matter. It’s as if your thinkpan is leaking out of your ears, and you wonder if you're dying.

Most likely.

You never imagined perishing like this. Oh sure, you’ve imagined your death thousands of times. You’re the Grand Highblood. Motherfucking occupational hazard.

Still, you had never imagined dying in outer fucking space in the wake of the Vast Glub.

Who will light your pyre, you wonder. Does it even matter?

Suddenly, everything goes a momentary and blissful white. You know nothing. You feel nothing.

Eventually, you come back to yourself enough to _hear_ something.

A voice.

You open your eyes, and a troll sits down down next to you, one with blank white eyes, sclerae and pupils, and pointy little horns. You turn your head ever so slightly to get a good look at them.

With the hem of their thin dress, they dab at the blood bubbling from your mouth and onto the floor.

You mouth their name.

They inhale slowly, and shake their head. Not to refute what you've suggested, but for another reason entirely.

You know who they are the same way you know your own reflection, because only one troll in your life ever looked at you so earnestly that they seemed to look through you.

“Latula,” you breathe, reaching out to her.

She moves away.

“Why?” she wants to know.

You don't know the answer, because there could be so many. She makes the diamond sign with her pointer and middle fingers.

“Why, what?” you ask.

She begins to sing. Not the best you’ve ever heard, or even close. Singing was never one of Latula's strengths, but it’s her voice just the same, husky and soft. It belongs to her. Just like you belong to her, at least partially, as her moirail, whose devotion to her never wavered.

Her voice grows louder.

 _“Deixe-me ir,_ _  
_ _preciso andar…”_

“I’m sorry for everything,” you tell her.

She shakes her head, her expression almost scathing. “You had so many reasons. Why didn't you _live?_ ”

“I've lived hundreds of motherfuckin' sweeps.”

“You existed,” Latula says, her eyes narrowed in exasperation. _“That is not the same thing as living.”_

She gets to her feet, which are bare. There's a ring of white paint around her neck, a white diamond painted onto her hand, and white paint on her eyelids. She offers you her hand, and tries to help you up. You cannot move, though.  
  
“There's motherfuckin' more to that song, ain't there?” you ask her, as if hearing it is the most important thing you'll ever do.

“Of course.”

“Gonna up an' sing it?”

“Why not?”

Even as she gazes at you with frustration, she sings.

 _“Deixe-me ir,_ _  
_ _preciso andar._ _  
_ _Vou por aí a procurar,_ _  
_ _rir pra não chorar.”_

She sits down on the floor, next to the impressive puddle of blood you hemorrhaged, her back to the wall. You lie beside her, and, after a minute's thought, manage to crawl a few paltry inches so you can rest your head in her lap. The end is coming. The Messiahs are near, the Dark Carnival close behind.

You manage an agonized exhalation, not crying out at the pain, because you are far too glad to see Latula again.  
  
_“Quero assistir ao sol nascer,_ _  
_ _ver as águas dos rios correr,_ _  
_ _ouvir os pássaros cantar._ _  
_ _Eu quero nascer, quero viver.”_

She runs her claws gently through your hair, and you can practically feel the individual whorls of her fingertips when she rests them upon your forehead. You draw another painful breath, with what feels like knives in your diaphragm. Latula holds you close.

 _“Deixe-me ir,_ _  
_ _preciso andar..."_ _  
_

You inhale once more, almost laughing and choking on your blood in the process. And this time, when you close your eyes, a half-smile on your face, they do not open again.  
  
_"...Vou por aí a procurar,_ _  
_ _rir pra não chorar.”_

* * *

In an adjacent timeline, another universe, you fire off messages to your moirail's matesprit as the world ends. You're her server player in a deadly game, and she trusts you well enough.

Throughout the sweeps you waste here, you try to make sure she doesn't die, a favor to your 'rail, and also because she's so adroit at insulting you. You keep her living just so she can die in a more creative way later, before your eyes.

This time, when you drag her dead, bloodied body to a platform, she lives again.

Perhaps that is the manifestation of the mercy the Messiahs couldn't show you on Alternia.

But you have no memory of such a place. Alternia never existed, here.

When Latula starts breathing again, you offer her a hand to pull her up. She takes it and laughs.

She rises wearing an outfit almost as teal as her eyes, flipping you off, jumping back on her skateboard, and swearing vengeance on the thing that killed her. She knows what tactics she must use, she says, and she's so intelligent that you nearly believe her.

You have no idea why, but you want to hold her close and thank the Dark Carnival for returning her to your group.

You do the last thing, at least.

"You're an asshole, but that move right there was fuckin' rad," she tells you.

"I live to serve," you sign in response, only half-sarcastically.

**Author's Note:**

> a translation for the song latula sings during and at the end of the story [(and my personal favorite rendition)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVrc1qeth-4):
> 
> "Deixe-me ir,  
> preciso andar.  
> Vou por aí a procurar,  
> rir pra não chorar."
> 
> (Let me go,  
> I need to walk.  
> I go there to search,  
> to laugh so that I don't cry.)
> 
> "Quero assistir ao sol nascer,  
> ver as águas dos rios correr,  
> ouvir os pássaros cantar.  
> Eu quero nascer,  
> quero viver."
> 
> (I want to see the sun rise,  
> to see the water of rivers running,  
> to hear the birds singing,  
> I want to be born,  
> I want to live.)
> 
> "Se alguém por mim pergunta,  
> diga que eu só vou voltar,  
> quando eu me encontrar."
> 
> (If someone asks for me  
> tell that I am only going to return  
> when I find myself.)
> 
> "Deixe-me ir,  
> preciso andar.  
> Vou por aí a procurar,  
> rir pra não chorar."
> 
> (Let me go,  
> I need to walk.  
> I go there to search,  
> to laugh so that I don't cry.)
> 
> two other songs that i listened to heavily in writing this fic and working out its themes, and even considered using certain lyrics for the title of this fic, are johnny cash's cover of "hurt", and ["oats in the water"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaH4W1rY9us), by ben howard


End file.
